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![Apartment hunting in Chicago is exciting for the first 28 minutes and then it becomes a multi-month arduous task. You make a list of neighborhoods, ranging from ideal locations down to the We’d Live Here If We Had To locations. Next is establishing a price range and how far you’re willing to go outside of said “established” price range. Next, amenities, the non-negotiables to the wants to the we could live withs and so on.
Those first 28 minutes are dream minutes. You name everything you want and you truly believe that that apartment actually exists, and in your price range no less.
Suddenly reality kicks you in the groin and before you know it you’re living in Skokie.
Kirby and I began the process early. Our friend’s mother is a realtor and she graciously said she’d help us find a place. We gave her our list of ideals to Skokies and she began the search.
A week ago she called me to let me know that a space had opened up in our ideal neighborhood and actually a few hundred underneath our financial ceiling. “Go look at it right now because I guarantee it’ll be gone today.”
We went. We loved it. It was better than we imagined. We applied for a July 1 move-in date. We waited.
A few days later our realtor called me while I was at the airport.
“Someone else got the space. They can pay full price (our realtor had gotten $200 a month knocked off for us) and they can move in today.”
“There has to be something we can do,” I said. “Have they signed the lease already?”
“Not yet.”
“I want to go after it until they tell us to go away. Let’s frustrate the board of the building.”
I was not going down without a rumble.
She suggested I write an email to the board and plead our case. “Sometimes they can be softies. I’ve had clients do this before,” she said.
Last ditch effort. She told me to write a letter as soon as possible, to send it to her and that she’d track down the email addresses of the board members. There were 5 board members who oversaw the building and I needed 3 of them on our side to get the space.
Five minutes later I emailed her and included the photo above.
——-
To the board of [redacted],
Thank you for considering our application. We are very appreciative of your time and discernment for what is best for [redacted]. If we may, we’d like to implore you to not only consider our application information and financial status, but more importantly, we’d like for you to consider that we are also accomplished humans in many regards. A few examples:
Kirby has acted at 2nd City, Improv Olympic, hosted a morning show at WGN, and has an unimpressive vertical leap of an astounding negative 12 inches. You read that correctly. When she jumps she actually goes down. Scientists are baffled.
Joshua owns his own photography company and at one time had a beard growing contest with Grizzly Adams. It ended up being a draw. Both men were satisfied with the results and celebrated the dual victory with beer drinking and cabin building.
Kirby O’Connell is as south-side Chicago Irish as they come. “Cubs who?” she asks. “You go north of Diversey and you’re in Wisconsin.”
Joshua knows nothing about sports to the disappointment of his father. His father knows nothing about fine art to the disappointment of his son. They have found that good whiskey and fine cigars cover a multitude of sins.
So, board, we humbly request that you accept us into your lovely community of lofts. We are good people with kind hearts, and we promise to increase the curly blonde hair and beard presence in your community by thousands of percentage points.
Thankfully and respectfully,
Joshua and Kirby
——-
One stolen joke, some hyperbolic comedy (I know far more about sports than I let on), and 2 hours later I received a text message:
“You’re in. All 5 board members gave you and Kirby the thumbs up.”
Don’t settle for a no when there’s room to wiggle out a yes. We loved the space, so why not fight for it until the board filed a restraining order?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4e2jsQTFx1r0k171o1_1280.png)
Apartment hunting in Chicago is exciting for the first 28 minutes and then it becomes a multi-month arduous task. You make a list of neighborhoods, ranging from ideal locations down to the We’d Live Here If We Had To locations. Next is establishing a price range and how far you’re willing to go outside of said “established” price range. Next, amenities, the non-negotiables to the wants to the we could live withs and so on.
Those first 28 minutes are dream minutes. You name everything you want and you truly believe that that apartment actually exists, and in your price range no less.
Suddenly reality kicks you in the groin and before you know it you’re living in Skokie.
Kirby and I began the process early. Our friend’s mother is a realtor and she graciously said she’d help us find a place. We gave her our list of ideals to Skokies and she began the search.
A week ago she called me to let me know that a space had opened up in our ideal neighborhood and actually a few hundred underneath our financial ceiling. “Go look at it right now because I guarantee it’ll be gone today.”
We went. We loved it. It was better than we imagined. We applied for a July 1 move-in date. We waited.
A few days later our realtor called me while I was at the airport.
“Someone else got the space. They can pay full price (our realtor had gotten $200 a month knocked off for us) and they can move in today.”
“There has to be something we can do,” I said. “Have they signed the lease already?”
“Not yet.”
“I want to go after it until they tell us to go away. Let’s frustrate the board of the building.”
I was not going down without a rumble.
She suggested I write an email to the board and plead our case. “Sometimes they can be softies. I’ve had clients do this before,” she said.
Last ditch effort. She told me to write a letter as soon as possible, to send it to her and that she’d track down the email addresses of the board members. There were 5 board members who oversaw the building and I needed 3 of them on our side to get the space.
Five minutes later I emailed her and included the photo above.
——-
To the board of [redacted],
Thank you for considering our application. We are very appreciative of your time and discernment for what is best for [redacted]. If we may, we’d like to implore you to not only consider our application information and financial status, but more importantly, we’d like for you to consider that we are also accomplished humans in many regards. A few examples:
Kirby has acted at 2nd City, Improv Olympic, hosted a morning show at WGN, and has an unimpressive vertical leap of an astounding negative 12 inches. You read that correctly. When she jumps she actually goes down. Scientists are baffled.
Joshua owns his own photography company and at one time had a beard growing contest with Grizzly Adams. It ended up being a draw. Both men were satisfied with the results and celebrated the dual victory with beer drinking and cabin building.
Kirby O’Connell is as south-side Chicago Irish as they come. “Cubs who?” she asks. “You go north of Diversey and you’re in Wisconsin.”
Joshua knows nothing about sports to the disappointment of his father. His father knows nothing about fine art to the disappointment of his son. They have found that good whiskey and fine cigars cover a multitude of sins.
So, board, we humbly request that you accept us into your lovely community of lofts. We are good people with kind hearts, and we promise to increase the curly blonde hair and beard presence in your community by thousands of percentage points.
Thankfully and respectfully,
Joshua and Kirby
——-
One stolen joke, some hyperbolic comedy (I know far more about sports than I let on), and 2 hours later I received a text message:
“You’re in. All 5 board members gave you and Kirby the thumbs up.”
Don’t settle for a no when there’s room to wiggle out a yes. We loved the space, so why not fight for it until the board filed a restraining order?
Settle in, settle in. On Friday I’m flying to Cleveland to preach at a church that my buddy Andy started over a year ago. I love preaching and I’m working through a few thoughts, very mid-teaching 1st Draft-ish 28-year-old thoughts, but you are a free audience and I’ll take advantage of that. I’m going to be talking about wrath and mercy, both God’s and ours, so there’s some context.
Ideas of the wrath and mercy of God range from God over humanity to Christ and individual humans; God’s wrath on nations and people groups to Jesus’ wrath on Pharisees. In contemplating a God’s wrath on people groups…I stop almost before I begin. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know, no matter how much academic text or theological commentary I read on the subject, I do not know. I can give glimpses of formulated thoughts, but never fully articulated, secure thoughts.
Ah but St. Peter! To our gracious rescue! “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Freedom to shrug my shoulders. When confronted with deeper questions and ponderings on the wrathful movement of God. I do not feel pressure. I do not have to explain everything. All I can do is tell of my own hope, no more and no less.
St. Peter allows me to tell of my hope I have currently, at 28, not the hope that I’ll have when I’m 70. It takes years of contemplation, questioning, research, prayer, and endless patience to begin to understand theories and theologies of God’s wrath. I am not there yet. I do not possess the wisdom of an elderly man, but I am on the path. So I shrug and say, “Get back to me in 50 years. Maybe I’ll have an inch more of an answer.”
There you go, for what it’s worth.
“You don’t look at atrocities and ask, ‘What is God trying to teach the world through this horror?’ There are kinds of suffering that your effort to bring meaning, ineffability distorts and destroys the potential for any meaning whatsoever. If you think suffering can be quantified in some type of learning principle, you have made mockery of your own suffering, let alone the suffering of others. Dont look for meaning, meaning will come to you, frankly meaning will come knock on your door in ways you do not need to be looking… You don’t have much to do with God, He has much to do with you.”—
Dan Allender, The Story Workshop (via andrewjbauman)
(Source: theallendercenter.org)
I’m at The Davis Theater in Lincoln Square on a Tuesday night at 10:00 pm. One other guy in the crowd. It’s a beat up old theater, probably was nice in the 90s but is kind of drabby now. I’m seeing The Avengers because strangers I read on the internet said it was good for a laugh. I have a bag of salted popcorn soaked in butter product and a cola so big our ancestors would be ashamed of us.
This is me in America on May 8 2012.
My future father-in-law: What did you name your new company?
Me: Joshua Longbrake Photography, LLC.
My future father-in-law: Your name? That’s it?
Me: What’s the name of your law firm you started again? Oh that’s right. Last Name, Last Name, Last Name & Last Name, LLC.
(Got him.)
Red Eye nails it. They give out free papers filled with advertisements, but they are totally fine with print newspapers dying. Why pay for printing when people can get their same product with no overhead? Not many newspapers see it this way.
Anyway.
Ah, the name of God and vanity.
“God I miss her.”
“God, I miss her.”
“God! I miss her.”
“God…I miss her.”
That we, as little humans in a vast cosmos, are permitted to utter any name of God is incomprehensible (much less the cross!). Every utterance of God should be, though it is not always, out of awe.
And there are times when the experience of reality, of God’s created reality, is so intense, so deep and true and terrifying, that there is no other word to utter than a name of God. May it never come from my tongue flippantly.
